Burial or internment in a casket is the most common method in the United States and many other countries to dispose of human remains. The body of the deceased is placed in the casket which is then placed in a burial vault and buried. Similarly the casket can be placed in a mausoleum or crypt.
Caskets come in a standard size, typically having external dimensions of 20″×30″×79″ (H×W×L). In order to avoid the additional cost for non standard or oversized vaults or crypts, the exterior dimensions of the casket must fit within a standard sized vault or crypt.
The obesity epidemic facing the United States and other developed nations has presented a new problem to the bereaved and funeral industry as a whole. When an obese individual dies, they often will not fit inside a standard sized casket. This means an oversized casket must be used. If the exterior dimensions of the oversized casket (including the side handles) exceeds the interior dimensions of the burial vault, an oversized burial vault must be used. All of this adds a considerable amount of additional expense.
In placing an obese person into a casket and then into a burial vault the critical dimension becomes the width of the casket. This situation is complicated by the fact the exterior width of the casket is increased by the handles located on either side of the exterior of the casket. If the exterior width of the casket is 30″ this will typically leave the prior art casket with an interior width of 22″ to 24″.
What is needed is a way to more efficiently use this external width of the casket. Essentially this means finding away to maximize the internal width of the casket while maintaining the overall external width of the casket within the standard internal width of a standard sized burial vault.
Prior art teaches various caskets handles which extend and retract. However none of these provide a handle which is flush with the exterior wall of the casket while the handle is in a stored or retracted position.
Further the handles in prior that do retract partially into the sidewall of the casket require an increased thickness of the sidewall. This means that while the amount the retracted handle protrudes from the exterior of the sidewall is reduced the interior width is diminished. Thus they do not provide a solution to this problem.
What is needed, therefore, is a casket which has handles that maximize the interior width while minimizing the exterior width.